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“I f***ing stink,” Tom Aspinall warns me, raising his eyebrows as I tentatively approach the pristine, freshly-laid, black and white mats in his gym. There are graver warnings one could be issued by the UFC heavyweight champion – a status that comes with the moniker “The Baddest Man On The Planet”. But herein lies the great paradox around Aspinall: he is the baddest man on the planet – technically, the most-skilled hand-to-hand combatant on Earth – yet he is one of the nicest people you could encounter.
He is also accurate – in the cage, yes, with the kind of blurring strikes that have helped him break records and win gold – but also in his appraisal of the smell. The stench of sweat has diffused throughout the gym now, particularly noticeable as it was not this way 15 minutes earlier, before I ducked into a side room to speak to one of the Wigan mixed martial artist’s teammates. But with Aspinall and a handful of his training partners having drilled technique with increasing intensity, the atmosphere has thickened. Everyone seems quite used to it.
“I like the details within training,” says Aspinall, who has honed a uniquely versatile skillset as a heavyweight, to complement a speed unprecedented for his size. “But I don’t like training slowly. I like to train hard. If it’s an hour of slow technique, there’s only so much information I can take. If you were to ask me what techniques we drilled yesterday, I’d probably struggle to tell you, but if you put me in that position, I’d probably just do it. Yesterday we sparred for like 10 rounds, that was good.”
An eclectic playlist soundtracks training, with Oasis hits spliced between Take That, Barry White and McFly. Singing along is Aspinall’s father, Andy.
In fact, Andy leads the session, extending two decades of training his now-32-year-old son. One of Britain’s first jiu-jitsu black belts, Andy is 62 years old and 24 knee surgeries deep. Still, it was not providence that Tom would grow into a champion, especially considering the endearing but almost comical height difference between the 6ft 5in son and his 5ft 8in father. Andy’s own fighting pedigree has been crucial, for certain, but so has the former coder’s business acumen.
In the gym today are recent UFC signings Mario Pinto and Louie Sutherland; former Olympic boxer Stan Bertens, of the Netherlands; Zac Fagan, who was 12 when a 17-year-old Tom first coached him in jiu-jitsu; photographer and British jiu-jitsu champion Lisa Grego; sports therapist Danielle Gray; family friend Frank; and media and marketing manager Charlie Gibson.
Oh, and former boxing champion Savannah Marshall strolls in at one point, to watch training and speak with Frank – a close friend of her coach Peter Fury, who is uncle to the Tyson Fury. “Tom was a little fatty when I first met him,” Marshall grins.
As she chats to Frank, Tom sits in the corner, resting between rounds. Peering to check if he has enough breath to engage in conversation, I ask about his new, galactic-themed neck tattoo. “Well, half of it’s on the mat, mate!” he says. Noticing the peeling ink, I turn to Andy, who shakes his head. “There’s a lot of meaning behind it,” Tom explains. “I’ve got a battle scene on my chest, so it’s the sky above the battle. Also, my wife’s star sign is linked in with the galaxy. I’m running out of meanings now, running out of skin.”
Slowly but surely, time is running out before Aspinall’s next fight: his first undisputed title defence.
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On Saturday 25 October, Aspinall will face France’s Ciryl Gane in Abu Dhabi. The main event of UFC 321 marks Aspinall’s first since July 2024, when he made the rare decision to defend the interim title, amid a prolonged, frustrating saga involving Jon Jones. Aspinall held the interim title for 20 months of Jones’s 28-month title reign, which featured just one defence by the American – and which was defined by his refusal to face Aspinall. Some fans deem Jones MMA’s greatest-ever fighter, but this episode was the latest stain on his legacy, adding to failed drug tests and run-ins with the law. Ultimately, Jones retired this summer, and Aspinall was thus crowned undisputed champion.
Aspinall, who quickly tired of talk around that fight, is simply happy to have a return booked. “I’m kind of picturing the fight constantly,” he says of the bout with Gane. “When I’m training, I’m trying to replicate it as closely as I can while being as safe as I can.
“I always watch tape on my opponents, and we get sparring partners who are similar to them. We’ll have guys with tendencies that Ciryl has, so I can try things and see how they react. It’s pretty rare that I try to win a spar, it’s more about learning and sticking to a gameplan.”
Aspinall has been remarkably open about his fear before fights, especially considering he himself is one of the most fearsome opponents one could draw; all 15 of his wins have come via stoppage, and he has never been past the second round. In fact, Aspinall’s average UFC fight time of two minutes and two seconds is the shortest by an athlete with five or more bouts in the promotion.
In any case, action is the cure for anxiety, and training puts Aspinall’s mind at ease. “I generally sleep alright on fight week,” he says. “It’s still stressful, you’re still fully aware that you’ve got to go in there on Saturday night and fight somebody. But as far as running through stuff in my mind, I’ll have done that for the past eight weeks.”
In the fights themselves, “I just do what my body tells me. I think that comes from drilling technique over and over.” The occasion itself will not overwhelm Aspinall, either, because “it’s the same as the first fight I had, all those years ago. I’ve got an opponent, a date, and I just work towards that.”
There was a time when Aspinall struggled for opponents, however, due to the ease with which he was dealing with them, and he’d essentially have to pay them out of his own ticket-money earnings. This was in his early early 20s, in a frustrating phase that led him to dip into boxing and even serve as a sparring partner for Tyson Fury, ahead of the latter’s world-title win against Wladimir Klitschko.
Boxing may not be contained to Aspinall’s past, however.
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Andy’s astuteness has been a driving factor in Tom’s monetary success, but the UFC’s fighter pay – long the subject of criticism – pales in comparison to what the top end of boxing can offer.
As such, Andy makes it clear he’d happily see his son switch to boxing at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, Gibson mentions the relevance of one of Tom’s six-year-old twins, who has autism: “You talk about generational wealth… Tom has a son who will need care the rest of his life, even after Tom’s gone.”
Frank effuses that Aspinall would thrive in boxing: “You could put Tom in with the top 15 in the world, I’m sure of it. He’s so quick, he’s got that twitch like Tyson. It confuses people.”
An 80-year-old who barely looks 60, Frank is an enigmatic presence and disarmingly polite (“Have you got enough water? Do you need a lift back to the station?”). A prostate cancer survivor, Frank often spends days around the Aspinalls, deeming the quality of their company to trump the fact that, to reach the gym, he must travel past the scene of his motorbike crash as a teenager. “Two boys threw a lead pipe at my spokes,” he says of the incident, which left him with one leg shorter than the other.
Anyway, if your eyebrows raised at Frank’s “top 15” claim, perhaps Bertens can persuade you. The former Olympic boxer, now in MMA, acknowledges Oleksandr Usyk’s vast experiential advantage over Aspinall, but compares the Briton’s style to that of the Ukrainian – boxing’s undisputed heavyweight champion. Bertens, who also backs Aspinall to fare well against a top-15 boxer, adds: “When Tom grabs you and puts his weight on you, you’re f****d.”
Still, although it is easy to focus on Aspinall’s striking, given his current knockout streak, his jiu-jitsu is equally formidable – just less tested in MMA.
“He can do anything to a world-class level,” Fagan says. “Andy is focused on principles, whereas Tom would show us that but also some crazy, alternate way to do a technique. There’s a side to his game people never see, because he’s too good to be put in bad positions.” He adds, jokingly: “And as thick as he is, he’s very clever.
“His vision is too good, he sees everything coming.” Speaking of vision, I try to prevent mine from drifting to Fagan’s cauliflower ears. “I’m still sore from when he did a tricep crush on me when I was a kid,” he says, while flexing his arm – the catalyst for a hat-trick of loud cracks.
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“Tom’s done me plenty of harm,” Andy says later, with Tom having driven us to his father’s house after a stop-off to buy some porridge. Bizarrely, Andy’s eyes glint as he recalls this damage, while his mouth curls – trying to overcome Andy’s instinct to suppress a smile. Pointing to a spot in his shed, he says, “It was in that corner that he dislodged my tooth,” before shrugging: “That was just Sunday nights.
“With my kids, it was always like: ‘Tea will be ready in 15 minutes, do you want to go and have a fight?’ They’d think nothing of it. They’d just think it was another game.” Tom concurs with a gentle laugh: “My kids are the same. My youngest – they’re twins, but he’s technically the youngest – comes to me and says, ‘Can we do some escapes?’ He means me getting him in a headlock and him escaping.”
While the floor of Andy’s shed is covered with padding for training, the walls are adorned with photos and paintings of Tom, plus posters from his UFC fights. One photo shows Andy and Tom grappling when the latter was around 10 years old; above it is a near identical image, but from the last five years. On the adjacent wall hangs a photo of a young Tom and his brother Joe, who also coaches jiu-jitsu. “He’s much meaner than Tom,” Andy says. “Tom’s wife can fight, too. They met at one of my jiu-jitsu classes.”
Later, as Andy sinks into his sofa while his dog Vince (a broken-back survivor) skids past, I get the sense he could happily spend every breath he has left talking about his family. “You just want everybody getting better, don’t you? Not for me, for them.” At one point, he mentions previously owning greyhounds and a kennel, but how he “didn’t want to give my dogs to a trainer, because I didn’t think they’d do right by them”. There’s a parallel with Andy’s protection over Tom, though it’s a protection that goes both ways.
Those close to the pair are protective, too. For all the acknowledgements that Tom is a special fighter, the Aspinalls’ qualities as people are touted equally highly by their nearest and dearest.
“They’re special people, every one of them,” Frank says, leaning forward to punctuate the point, while Bertens – who is preparing for his MMA debut – adds: “They’re genuine. They could just use me as a sparring partner, they’re not obligated to help me, but they really want to.” Meanwhile, Gibson says: “Tom and Andy are so welcoming, and if you’re not like that… you don’t last around here. I’ve only been with them for 18 months, but they’ve been like family since day one. Tom’s very loyal, very chill, still shops at Asda.”
Gibson was previously a TV producer but observed the growing importance of social media in sport, leading him to change tack. He began working with top-level women’s footballers, including England international Ella Toone, before meeting Aspinall in late 2023, right after the heavyweight had eviscerated Sergei Pavlovich at Madison Square Garden to become interim UFC champion. Gibson decided to take the “risk” of working for Aspinall for free for three months.
The fighter’s socials began “flying”, and Gibson ultimately opted to move on from his other clients to go “all in” on the UFC star. Now, the pair and Andy own a media company together. During Gibson’s time involved, Aspinall has gone from 400,000 Instagram followers, 15,000 YouTube subscribers and no TikTok account to over 1.6m on Instagram, 550,000 on YouTube, and 800,000 on TikTok. Collectively, the channels achieve a monthly average of 100,000,000 views.
In fact, Gibson arrived at a crucial moment. While there was an obvious negative in Aspinall’s absence from the cage, the link to Jones was beneficial for the Briton’s profile – and Gibson mined the saga for content. “It’s the easiest job I’ve ever done. It was just Tom being Tom for 12 months. When we film, I just want him to feel like he’s having a chat with me. The way Tom is, it’s kind of like his life is a movie, but he’s in the background of it.”
Gibson’s role has grown to involve more admin, and he’s keenly aware of the importance of building a brand with Aspinall, which brings us to the fighter’s deal with clothing brand Champion, whose logo is neatly stamped in black across the tall, white walls.
“Coming into this year, we were looking at bringing on marquee athletes,” says Lorenzo Moretti, Champion’s CEO in EMEA. Speaking to The Independent over the phone from Italy, Scottish-born Moretti says: “Tom was at the very top of the priority list of who we wanted to work with, because of what he means to the sport.
“We wanted someone who would be a role model. Tom, Andy and the team’s family values felt very strong. And Tom is intelligent, articulate, he’s a phenomenal pundit – on top of the fact that he’s an incredible athlete.”
Champion launched Aspinall’s clothing line with a simple but defiant theme: “Heavyweight Champion”. At the time, the Briton was still interim champion, but Jones’s retirement was impending. “It was the play on words,” says Moretti, “that’s he’s a heavyweight and we’re Champion, but also the fact we believed he was the heavyweight champion; even if that wasn’t what the UFC was calling him at the time, it was definitely what real fight fans thought.”
Gibson, too, knows Aspinall’s brand must last beyond the champion’s fight career. On that note, he delivers one of the most intriguing lines on a day that is overspilling with them. “I think the UFC will be part of Tom’s journey,” he says. “It won’t be the whole.”